TNP: HARASSED BY LOAN SHARKS

"Debtors' neighbours feel loan sharks' fury"- Terrible...

HARASSED BY LOAN SHARKS
10,000 cases last year That makes it 27 police reports daily
By Joyce Lim November 11, 2007

THINK the 10,000 figure is startling? It gets even worse.
In this case in 2003, Mr Raymond Leng allowed the previous owner of the flat to stay for another month after he bought the flat, but then had to face the wrath of loan sharks. -- File pictures
On one busted loan shark syndicate's database, there were 1,000 debtors. These ah longs (loan sharks) were dealing in $500,000 every month.
Another had 500 debtors, with a turnover of $80,000 a month.
The loan sharks' tactics are also getting bolder - they use debtors to do the dirty work.
And they harass the debtors' neighbours.
The notorious Ah Long San (former loan shark Chua Tiong Tiong) was jailed in 2001, but three equally dangerous characters who go by the nicknames Tiger, Carlsberg and Rolex have taken his place.
These three men run loan sharking syndicates and have groups of runners helping them.
The police have nabbed some of their henchmen in recent months.
The cops are taking a tough stance because the number of loan shark related harassment cases has gone up.
(Above) The door of this debtor resembles a colour palette, as he owes at least 18 loan sharks. In 2005, there were 8,568 police reports lodged, before the figure shot past 10,000 last year.
In the first half of this year, four major intelligence-driven operations were conducted, resulting in the arrest of 32 suspects, police spokesman assistant superintendent Toh Boon Ngee told The New Paper.
'In April, police busted a syndicate (with 1,000 debtors)... that was responsible for at least 230 cases of harassment island-wide,' added ASPToh.
Last month, police said they had conducted raids against loan sharks at Yishun, Hougang and Eunos and arrested three men between 32 and 39 years old.
Over $100,000 in cash and other items such as computer storage devices and handphones were seized.
RECRUITING YOUTHS
From the arrests made, the police noticed a worrying trend of loan sharks recruiting youths and debtors to assist them in their unlicensed moneylending and harassment activities.
The debtors-turned-runners are forced to open bank accounts under their names for illegal money transactions.
This means the loan sharks can stay out of the picture if the police discover the accounts.
The police said that three months ago, one of Tiger's runners was arrested. This man has since been sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment and 2 strokes of the cane.
(Above) In this file picture, the warning from loan sharks were found on the fourth floor of this flat although the debtor lives on the 10th floor. The 32-year-old had taken a loan from Tiger last November, which he could not repay.
To clear his debt, he worked as Tiger's runner, assisting the man to withdraw and transfer money through ATMs.
In another operation in June, a 19-year-old national serviceman was arrested for abetment of unlicensed moneylending. He had been working for both Carlsberg and Rolex.
Between February and June this year, he helped to collect repayments from debtors and performed ATM transactions for Rolex. Earlier, he was also helping Carlsberg collect repayments.
If the debtors could not pay, he would harass them by splashing coffee at their homes.
He has been sentenced to two years supervised probation and 150 hours of community service.
ASP Toh said: 'Police take a serious view of unlicensed moneylending and harassment offences and will continue to act against the offenders.
Police will not hesitate to take action against debtors who are found to be assisting unlicensed moneylenders in their illegal activities.'
Those who harass or intimidate anyone in connection with loans by an unlicensed moneylender face a maximum fine of $40,000, or up to three years in jail, or both.
Those who damage property as part of the harassment can also be caned.

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Debtors' neighbours feel loan sharks' fury
HE owes nothing to loan sharks, yet his door has been splashed with paint on numerous occasions.
Mr Tan is the victim of the loanshark's new tactic of harassing the neighbours of debtors.
He found out that a neighbour had once borrowed money from loan sharks.
The retiree said in Mandarin: 'I know she feels bad about what happened. I never scold her. What for? It's beyond her control.
'She did apologise to us and told us that she has already cleared the debt so many years ago. But the loan sharks still return to vandalise.
'We have already informed the police. We can only leave it to the police to do their job.'
Others in Mr Tan's Bedok Reservoir Road neighbourhood have also been harassed by loan sharks.
Mr Low, 59, who lives one floor below Mr Tan, has also found fresh paint on his door on a few occasions.
Last week, another neighbour returned home after work to find the grille gate locked with a bicycle chain.
LOCKED INSIDE FLAT
Said the neighbour, Mr Ng Cheng Heng: 'My son was locked inside the flat. What if something happened and he was trapped?
'The loan shark should go after the person who owed them money, not the neighbours.'
The 48-year-old marketing executive lives with his wife and son in a four-room flat below the resident who had borrowed from the loan sharks.
When approached, the resident, who declined to be named, admitted that her husband had taken a loan from a loan shark five years ago. But they claimed they have since cleared the debt.
Said the middle-aged woman: 'I don't know why the loan sharks keep harassing my neighbours. Now when I see them I feel very malu (Malay for embarrassed).
'We don't know which loanshark is doing this. My husband even took a day off work and stayed home, hoping to catch the loan shark who vandalised my neighbours' flats. But they did not turn up.'
Her neighbour, Mr Tan, joked: 'We're no longer disturbed by the loan sharks. When they splash red paint, I'll paint my door red. And if the paint is black, my new door colour will be black.'
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,147381,00.html?

TNP: Crooked lawyer made brothers' lives a mess

The Electric New Paper :
Crooked lawyer made brothers' lives a mess
OWNERS DUPED, BANK ALSO DUPED
Judge rules there was nothing to show that bank was at fault for approving loan
By Crystal Chan: 09 October 2007
THEIR former lawyer forged their signatures and made herself a co-owner of their $1 million property in Senang Crescent.
Using forged documents, she then got a bank to lend her $700,000 by mortgaging the property.
Sivakolunthu Thirunavukarasu then disappeared with the money.
As if that was not enough, the court recently ruled that Maybank has the right to sell the property and get the money owed to it.
The three brothers have appealed against the ruling.
One brother, Mr Sim Chiang Lee, a businessman in his 50s, said: 'We're in this mess because of that crooked lawyer.
'But she has fled and there's nothing we can do.'
Another brother, Mr Sim Sien Tiong, who is in his 50s, told The New Paper: 'The lawyer has run away so she won't have to face the music.
'What's important now is to see if there's any way to stop the bank from selling the property.'
If they don't pay up more than $750,000 owed (including interest), they risk having the property auctioned off by the bank.
Mr Chiang Lee said: 'The worst thing was that the property had been 'sold' to that lawyer and I didn't know about it until March 2004.
'We confronted the lawyer, but she merely apologised without explaining, so we went to the police.
'My brothers and I wrote to Maybank to state that we own the property and we don't recognise the mortgage, which was taken out behind our backs.'
They told The New Paper that their main beef is that they will not get the full profit if Maybank sells the property, as the bank will first deduct the amount owed to it.

SYMPATHY
The case even elicited sympathy from the High Court judge who heard the matter.
In his written judgment late last month, Justice Kan Ting Chiu said: 'This is yet another case where a fraud is committed, the prime suspect flees, and the victims are left to dispute over who is to bear the loss.'
In this case, he noted that although the brothers were duped by their lawyer, there was nothing to show that the bank was at fault for approving the loan, which was an ordinary banking transaction.
Therefore he upheld the mortgage as valid.
The ruling means that in the event of a sale, the owners - brothers Sim Sien Tiong, Sim Ah Ban and Sim Chiang Lee - will get only what is left after the loan amount has been deducted.
The brothers' woes began in March 2004, when the Singapore Land Authority informed Mr Sim Chiang Lee that a Maybank mortgage had been taken on the property, a tenanted warehouse at 23, Senang Crescent.
The brothers suspected Sivakolunthu of fraud and made a police report.
Investigations showed that she had forged her clients' signatures to transfer the property to herself.
She had earlier acted for the three brothers in another case.

CONFRONTED LAWYER
Little did they expect that the lawyer would later use the documents to get herself that bank loan.
In addition, she used more than $13,000, supposedly stamp fees for the transfer of the properties in the agreement, to pay for expenses unrelated to the brothers.
After the brothers found out about the loan, they confronted the lawyer who supposedly confessed to the deed and apologised for her action.
The brothers later made a police report but before she could be taken to task, she absconded.
In her absence, the Law Society moved to have her struck off the rolls on 29 Mar last year.
In 2005, Maybank began legal proceedings against Sivakolunthu and the brothers - it wanted the High Court to declare the mortgage valid and that it is entitled to any profits from the property.
In their defence, the brothers claimed they too, were victims of Sivakolunthu's fraud and that they had no knowledge of the mortgage.
Their lawyer, Mr Philip Fong of Harry Elias Partnership, argued that the mortgage should be declared invalid as it was obtained through fraud, wilful blindness and voluntary ignorance.
However, Maybank, represented by Mr Ng Yeow Khoon of Shook Lin & Bok, argued that the mortgage had been obtained fairly.
The bank had disbursed the money to Sivakolunthu in the belief that the mortgage was honest.
Justice Kan agreed that the brothers had not proven their case, and awarded judgment to Maybank.
He referred to an earlier precedent on a banking fraud case that was handed down by Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong last year.
Then, CJ Chan noted that in ordinary banking transactions, there is no reason for the bank to act dishonestly or to seek to defraud the customer of his property that has been put up as security.
Unless it can be shown that bank's own employees or agents have acted fraudulently or dishonestly against the bank's customers, he ruled that 'court actions against lending banks on the ground of fraud have little chance of success'.

The Sim siblings' case is expected to be heard in the Court of Appeal next January.


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Worker caught on webcam stealing alcohol from guests

'We were convinced that someone was taking our alcohol.'
'We were shocked as it is a five-star hotel in Singapore, a country known for its high standards of service.
'They immediately alerted the management, who refunded their three night's hotel stay of $597 and waived their Internet charges.

The Electric New Paper : Hotel housekeeper cleans up... ...in more ways than one
Worker caught on webcam stealing alcohol from guests
She picks up bottle... unscrews the cap... ...and pours out the booze
THEY suspected that someone might be stealing alcohol from their whisky bottle.
By Veema Bharwani 16 October 2007
THEY suspected that someone might be stealing alcohol from their whisky bottle.
So three Hong Kong tourists staying at the Hilton Singapore set up a webcam to see if they could catch the culprit on camera.
The result?
A 20-second video clip of a hotel housekeeper pouring whisky from the guests' bottle into an empty water bottle.
She repeats the process by pouring more whisky from another bottle into a separate water bottle.
The video was recorded on a webcam attached to one of the tourist's laptops.
This was the last thing the trio from Hong Kong was expecting on their weekend getaway in Singapore.
'We didn't expect this to happen in Singapore. We were looking to have a good time here,' said Mr Manoj Budhrani, a 28-year-old businessman.
The three men were in town for a weekend getaway from 28 Sep to 1 Oct and stayed at the Hilton Singapore.
They started their weekend by popping open a one-litre bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label whisky in their hotel room on Friday night. They said they had bought it for $237 from the airport duty-free shop. They also had a bottle of the less expensive Johnnie Walker Black Label.
They left the bottle in the room and went out clubbing later that night.
The next day, just before stepping out to lunch, one of the three men, MrJai Chulani, 28, remarked to the other two: 'Wow, we drank a quarter of a bottle last night. Not bad.'
But when they returned to the room at 5pm the same day, they noticed the level of alcohol in the bottle had dropped from the three-quarter mark to the half-way mark.
'We would not have noticed it if Jai hadn't remarked how much we drank before we left for lunch,' said MrBudhrani.
He said the others teased him saying he must have been drinking the alcohol on the sly.
'I told them it wasn't me,' MrBudhrani said with a laugh.
'We knew something was up because when we came back the room was clean. So someone had been there in our absence.
'We were convinced that someone was taking our alcohol.'
Not willing to let the incident rest, Mr Chulani suggested that since he had a laptop with a built-in webcam, they could leave it on to record what was going on in the room.
So on Sunday morning, just before leaving the room for the afternoon, the three men created the perfect setup.
They turned on the laptop and its camera, pointed it towards the side table on which the whisky bottles rested and pressed the record button.
They made sure that the laptop had its screen-saver on, so it couldn't be seen that it was recording.
Also, since they had almost finished the first whisky bottle, they opened a second and drank a bit out of it.
'We thought if someone was taking the whisky, they were trying to be careful about it and wouldn't take it if it was obvious - like when the bottle was too empty or too full,' said MrNavin Gaba.
Later that Sunday, when the trio came back to the room, they got a shock when they scanned through the five-hour long video recording.
CULPRIT CAUGHT
The camera caught a housekeeper, who looked to be in her late 40s, swiftly pouring some 20 per cent of the whisky from the first and second bottles into separate empty water bottles.
She did this without hesitation.
Added Mr Budhrani: 'We were shocked as it is a five-star hotel in Singapore, a country known for its high standards of service.'
Added Mr Gaba, 28: 'It's not how much she stole but the principle behind it.'
They immediately alerted the management, who refunded their three night's hotel stay of $597 and waived their Internet charges.
The hotel's general manager, MrAlain Mahillon said they had reprimanded the employee involved when asked what action was taken.
The hotel would not confirm if they have or are planning to file a police report against the housekeeper, or if the housekeeper had been dismissed.
They also declined to comment on whether they run background checks on staff before employing them.
He would only say: 'Guest satisfaction is key to our business and we strive to ensure all team members receive regular training and development to ensure they deliver the quality of service that our hotel name is renowned for. We regret that this isolated incident occurred.'
But the guests are not entirely satisfied.
Said Mr Budhrani: 'We are seriously considering filing a police report as we don't want other guests to go through what we went through.'
On complaints of theft and similar incidents in hotels, The Singapore Tourism Board's director of communications, Mr Muhammad Rostam Umar, said: 'STB does receive feedback from all sectors, including hotels. The Board is committed to providing prompt assistance to affected visitors by channelling their complaints to the relevant agencies for their necessary action.'
For example, if a tourist complained of a theft while staying here, STB could advise the tourist to file a police report.
Consumers Association of Singapore executive director Seah Seng Choon said that while it had not received complaints on thefts in hotels, there had been other complaints like unsatisfactory service and hotels over-charging for bookings made over the phone, among other things.
'The complaints were usually resolved by means of refunds, discounts or complimentary vouchers,' he added.
The irony in this case is that the staff may have got the liquor anyway.
Said Mr Budhrani: 'We would have never been able to finish the two bottles of whisky on our own. We would have left the unfinished bottles in the room for the staff.'
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Fear of the law makes victims cough up cash

Fear of the law makes victims cough up cash
Posted: 19 October 2007 1100 hrs
SINGAPORE: First, they used their victims' greed and the lure of fictitious lottery winnings to con money from them. Now, phone scam artists have found a new tack: Exploiting their prey's fear of the law.
Over the past three weeks, Singapore police have received 35 reports from people who got calls from persons posing as police officers or Supreme Court staff.
The impersonators would tell them to attend court or ask for money to be transferred. They would try to get their victims to part with money in exchange for being exonerated from involvement in criminal cases or the failure to attend court hearings.
In reality, none of the victims were involved in any such criminal or court proceedings - but even so, worry led at least one victim to part with about S$10,000.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the police said that investigators do sometimes inform members of the public over the phone about court dates and appointments at the police station.
"However, police will never ask for money to be deposited into a bank account. If such requests for property deposits or personal information disclosure are received, they should be reported to the police immediately," said the police.
Likewise, the Supreme Court, in a separate email to the media, said its staff members do not ask for payment verbally over the phone.
"Any request for payment of monies to third parties in respect of court proceedings should be made only if supported by an official court order," the court said.
Anyone who do not have a pending case in the Supreme Court should "exercise caution" with callers who identify themselves as court staff, and who direct them to attend court or transfer money, said the email. In case of doubt, verify the source of the call with the Supreme Court at 1800-338-1034.
More generally, phone scams can take different forms and the public should be wary, said the police, advising the public to check the caller's identity with the organisation he or she claims to be from.
Last month, it was reported that 122 people had been deceived to the tune of S$1.5 million in total, in lottery or lucky draw scams so far this year. They were instructed to hand over money after receiving phone calls or SMSes claiming that they had won prizes in overseas lucky draws. - TODAY/ym
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/306555/1/.html